68th Avenue-64th Place Historic District

This district in Ridgewood, Queens, is a group of 46 buildings along 68th Avenue and 64th Place, covering about 3.5 acres across parts of four city blocks. Nearly all are two-story brick row houses with one apartment per floor, built between 1909 and 1913. Developer Charles Groesch hired one architect, Louis Berger, to design every row, which produced consistent setbacks, scale and materials. Alternating shades of yellow, amber, brown and burnt orange brick break up the length of each row. Other features include brownstone stoops, elaborate ironwork, pressed metal cornices and cast-stone bands, sills, lintels and keystones, with Romanesque, Neo Grec and Renaissance Revival ornament. Small front gardens sit behind the setbacks, while corner buildings reach the lot line to anchor each row. The district was listed because it survives as a cohesive example of working-class housing from early twentieth-century Ridgewood. All metal cornices remain, as do most original doors, stoops and ironwork, and no non-contributing buildings lie within its boundaries.